April 18 is National Transgender HIV Testing Day

The second annual National Transgender HIV Testing Day (NTHTD) will be observed on Tuesday, April 18. The event is being organized by the University of California-San Francisco's Center of Excellence for Transgender Health (CoE).

According to the CoE, "NTHTD is a day to recognize the importance of routine HIV testing, status awareness, and continued focus on HIV prevention and treatment efforts among transgender people. This initiative encourages community-based organizations, health jurisdictions, and HIV prevention programs to participate by hosting local trans HIV testing community events (HIV testing, visibility campaign, community forums) and/or develop trans-specific HIV testing campaign materials and resources."

As part of the NTHTD initiative, the CoE has developed a Transgender HIV Testing Toolkit, which includes five modules "designed to reflect the most current HIV prevention research and best practices for serving trans and gender non-binary people."

The modules are: 1) Get the Facts about Trans People and HIV; 2) Testing and Enhanced Communication Approaches with Trans People; 3) Building Capacity to Increase HIV Testing Efforts for Trans People; 4) Community Engagement and National HIV Transgender HIV Testing Day; and 5) NTHTD and Toolkit Resources.

The CoE has also produced a number of other resources for the testing day, including a condensed toolkit for health departments, testing placards in English and Spanish, and a series of flyers to promote testing.

RESOURCES:

To support activities commemorating NTHTD, we have compiled an annotated list of online resources focusing on HIV/AIDS among transgender people.

Eric Brus writes about HIV policy. His HIV/AIDS Disparities Report is produced by the New England AIDS Education and Training Center Minority AIDS Initiative Project. The full version is available here.

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